Thursday, June 18, 2015

If anyone is delighting in this day, it is surely the Devil. The tragedy of 9 black victims cold bloodily
gunned down by a young white man is the sort of madness that only the Evil One
can come up. And he will delight even
more in the coming weeks and months ahead as this nation will continue to
polarize itself further regarding issues of race relations, gun control, mental
health, and death penalties. We jump up
and dance every time the Devil plays this tune. And because he hates us and wants us to be
miserable, he delights in all his handiwork.

And when these events occur, there is always a small but vocal minority rushing
to remind us that our Lord Jesus calls us to pray for our enemies. It is a thin grating noise of a kind of grace
that does not sit well with us in our anger.
And, for many of us—and I include myself—become even a little bit more
angry when we hear it. And those calls should irritate us. At their best, they are the call to slothful selves take the hard
difficult challenge of our Lord seriously, to keep us from a burning anger that
would lead us into more sin. However, at
worst, it is a call appealing the cheapest of graces.

Imagine a world without sin, a world without the Devil at work, such mayhem
would never happen. It would be a world
of peace. Yet we know it is not a world
of peace, and so when peace is broken, the next call is the call for
justice. And our justice will be tainted by our sin, we
know that. But our justice, while broken
and stained, still remains of divine origin.
In His providence, God has given
the state the authority to dispense His will against those who would break His
Law “Thou shalt not kill”.

What would perfect justice look like in this scenario? A speedy guilty verdict and trip to the
execution chamber? I can see the appeal
to that, but what if something better could come? What about due process? What about a man who comes to realize the
horrible nature of his crime? A man who
is confronted by God’s Law and hears the Good News of salvation in Christ
Jesus? A man who willingly accepts
whatever punishment the state gives to him as a sign of his effort to
reconcile? A man who rejects the hate
that now possesses him and can only throw himself to the mercy of God and repents to those whom he has so grievously hurt?

To pray for your enemy can mean to pray for God’s Law as well as His Gospel to be at work in the world.

About Me

I am a second career pastor who began ministry in 2009 after receiving my M.Div. from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. My previous career was in chemical sales. I am married with two children. I am a native Texan, but have lived in NY, VA, NJ and now SC. I was baptized as a Presbyterian, but I have been a Lutheran as long as I can recall.